


all know the devil looks after his own

by Saul



Category: All For the Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Demons, Gen, in which Neil Josten is a devil of a boy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-26
Updated: 2016-06-26
Packaged: 2018-07-18 08:57:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7308454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saul/pseuds/Saul
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kevin Day arrives with a shadow only Andrew Minyard can see.</p>
<p>That doesn't mean they get along.</p>
            </blockquote>





	all know the devil looks after his own

Andrew enjoyed the roof.

It stole his breath. It stole his calm. It stole the smoke from his cigarette, the grey wisps dissipated the moment wind picked up.  


If he looked over the edge (which he frequently did, legs dangling and heart pounding), the entirety of the Tower’s parking lot and networking roads to various campus buildings laid within reach. The day-to-day wasn’t often something he took note of, but sometimes, moments viewed from the roof stood out.

For instance: Allison Reynolds pushing back a leering boy, and the way the his fist swung too wide on the first punch. Later: Matt’s truck being coincidentally unlocked despite its automatic locking mechanism and him forgetting his keys inside. Also: Wymack’s papers scattering everywhere in a gust of wind, but miraculously not landing in any puddles. Once, in the colder months: Nicky’s hot cocoa, which he’d left too long on the curb as he demonstrated a proper Exy tackle to a few of Dan’s friends, beginning to steam again just before Nicky picked it up.

From what he observed, Andrew would say they were haunted if he couldn’t clearly see who was doing it.

Sometimes - more and more as the year went on, in fact - he was joined on the roof, but it was always the same person. A wiry, lean creature with bumpy, grey-red skin and hooked fingers with too many joints, it seemed capable of running and jumping and climbing at any speed on any whim. And, for whatever reason, it seemed to take its breaks from subtly influencing his teammate’s lives by perching next to Andrew, its pointed elbows on knobby knees and wicked blue eyes surveying the same boring stretch of campus Andrew did.

He never acknowledged the creature. The first time he’d spotted it had been the second time he’d met Kevin: it’d ghosted behind the boy with a broken hand, its face solemn and watching as Andrew struck a deal and made a promise.

(He’d seen creatures like it before, lurking in shadows and behind human eyes. They never meant well.)

(He’d learned quicker that once he passed the age for imaginary friends, others - foster parents, foster siblings, any persons - didn’t want to hear about the bulbous demon whispering into their ear. The creatures, too, didn’t take well to being noticed; he still had phantom pain in his calf muscles from the first and last time he’d made that mistake. They didn’t leave physical scars – they touched deeper than that.)

Since then, he’d learned its name - Neil - and a lot more besides, because for all that he never responded or looked toward the demon, it didn’t mind talking to him as if he could. It did that to his Exy teammates, too, muttering  _really, Seth? your inferiority complex is showing_ and  _come on, Aaron, talk to him. It’s not like brain surgery._

(The demon was fairly oblivious to human nature, if you asked Andrew. Aaron had no reason to talk to him.)

(It made him wonder for how long Aaron would even be by him. Until graduation, maybe.)

(It– … was on his mind when Betsy offered regulated talks between him and Aaron. He’d avoided the roof and the demon for a week after, lest he break his own rule just to smash its oversized teeth down its throat.)  


It didn’t care, as far as he could tell, about any other humans. In fact, on the disastrous Kathy Show, he’d seen it trip Riko when he walked on in front of all the cameras.  _Why_ it was so invested in Kevin, and why it extended that investment to his team, Andrew had to accept was something he’d need to ask the demon about: for all its babbling about everything else, it wouldn’t ever venture into its past.

Did demons even have a concept of time?  


“It’s the first Raven game tomorrow,” Neil said. Andrew didn’t look its way, and continued with his cigarette. “You guys can’t win with how you are, but would it kill you to put some effort into practicing your blocks with the rest of the group?”  


It was also obsessed with Exy. That was probably a by-product of it being Kevin’s demon.  


He kept waiting for it to turn from reluctantly helpful to damningly harmful, but it just  _wouldn’t._ The wait was more irritating than the babbling. Andrew contemplated the long drop between his feet, and wondered at speeding up the process.

“If you really practiced,” the demon was saying, “you could go pro. Maybe even Court. Why won’t you put any real effort in it?”  


Dropping the burnt filter of his cigarette, Andrew stood. The demon watched him with an odd expression, as it often did — and Andrew wanted to tell it to knock that look off its ugly mug, but that would be going against his code of not acknowledging what he saw. He used to think he manifested them himself, but he couldn’t have imagined Neil. No amount of drugs would give him the creativity to craft such a perfect irritant.  


He didn’t want to die. His arms were proof of that battle won years ago.  


There were bigger things to life than survival. That was the rest of the war.  


But he wondered, and he enjoyed the knots his stomach twisted up in when he leaned over the edge. He enjoyed, too, the demon asking, “Hey. What are you doing?” and then the demon yelping, “Holy  _blessings_!” when he took a step off the roof.

Demons couldn’t move much of the physical world at one time: they redirected, or nudged, or otherwise seduced energy to work for them, rather than producing any of their own. If they were passionate enough, if they focused enough, sometimes,  _sometimes_ , the managed what Neil did: its many-jointed fingers, hand warm as any human’s, curled around Andrew’s shoulder and yanked him back  _hard_ onto the roof’s cement. If he hadn’t felt and seen it reach out, he could’ve convinced himself his knee had buckled and he’d actually taken a step back.

Heart racing and throat closed up, Andrew’s breath heaved from the adrenaline rush; barely an inch from him, the demon crouched, its hands opening and closing restlessly above him.  _Andrew_ , it was saying, over and over,  _Andrew, come on, no, you’re stronger than that, you don't_ have  _to go pro, I take it back._

For the first time, Andrew met its eyes.

It stared back, its rambling paused.

“Did you do that on purpose?” It asked him, as deliberate as Andrew’s step forward.

Andrew scoffed.

Then he stood, dusted his pants off with trembling hands, forcibly stopped the trembling, and made his way back to the stairs.

Behind him, quiet, awed and, maybe, hopeful: “You can hear me. You can definitely hear me.”

(At that point, he didn’t deign to give a response.)

* * *

They didn’t beat the Ravens during Regionals.

They did make it to Nationals, but they didn’t make it to the semi-finals.

On the drive back from the away game, the five-to-nine score was heavy on only one. He sat in the back, rigid-backed and thin-lipped, his eyes focused on the middle distance. The Coach glanced back once or twice, possibly wondering if he should hand over alcohol now or at the end of the eight hour journey, but the rest of the bus was in a relative uproar over having made it so far in the first place.

“Next year!” Dan swore, her face twisted into fierce determination. “We came so close, we’ve already enough to rub in the media’s face. Next year, we’ll give them even more to chew on.”

“Don’t jinx it!” Matt cried.

“It’s too late, man, we’ve already screwed the pooch,” Seth shot back. “Thanks but no thanks for your pep talk, captain. We should’ve had that trophy.”

“Yeah? And since when do you care?”

“Since we almost had it, du'h.”

On the seat opposite the gloomy Kevin, Andrew had eyes only for his flip phone. He typed, _Quit looking at me like that._

The Foxes’ ever-present demon - who also threw a glance in Kevin’s direction but, unlike Wymack, decided that there wasn’t anything to be done at the moment and didn’t dwell over it - peered over Andrew’s shoulder and guffawed, mouth curved into a slice of a smile. His teeth were still ugly. He was, really, all-over ugly. Andrew hated him.

“Like what?” The demon asked, and leaned an elbow on Andrew’s shoulder. It prickled, not so much solid weight as the impression of coiled energy – like how some psychics raved about feeling an aura, only all concentrated into one spot. What began as the demon’s fumbled attempts at convincing him he wasn’t a threat had long shifted into an annoying hobby: in public, Andrew refused to outwardly acknowledge the demon. In retaliation, the demon would do its best to goad him into responding.

No one was paying attention to the back of the bus. Andrew shrugged it off.

Neil leaned away, but wouldn’t quit smiling. He never went too far from the Foxes; as the year went on and other demons moved in to wreck havoc, he’d personally persuaded (with claws and sparking fires) them to buzz off. He was dependable. During the winter formal, he’d warned Andrew of Riko’s plan to get Aaron alone and mess up what stability they had, and, after that averted disaster, Kevin’s break down that had him almost calling the Edgar Allan Ravens to accept the offer for assistant coach. He kept Andrew company on the roof whenever he could. He’d light Andrew’s cigarettes for him, sparks flicked from his fingertips.

Andrew hated Neil. A lot.

“Dan’s right. A bigger team, another year to cool your heads, and you guys might actually have a shot.”

_Why don’t you make a schedule with the Coach if you know so much?_ Andrew typed.

When Neil gave that serious consideration and began to ask, “Would you–”

Andrew cut him off with a furiously typed, _No. Write it yourself._

Neil huffed. It wasn’t done, he’d explained on one colder evening. Demons didn’t interact with humans like that. Andrew was an exception.

_You’re not acting like a typical demon,_ Andrew’d replied. Neil hadn’t responded to that.

He still had more than a few secrets tucked up his sleeve, mostly about the Moriyamas and their pet demon business. He’d escaped from it, he said, but they’d love to have him back. More than that, they’d love to have someone with Andrew’s gift on board. 

It wasn’t a topic Neil would divest all at once, but Andrew supposed he was interested in learning it. He wasn’t entirely sure. He hadn’t been interested in puzzling something out for a long while.

“Who are you texting?” Aaron asked from over the seat, his eyes narrowed by a sliver.

“His friend and Lucifer’s cousin, the demon,” Neil replied. Of course Aaron couldn’t hear him, but it gave Andrew a second’s worth of pause. 

“Bee,“ Andrew replied, a little too late. Aaron’s eyes narrowed further, but he faced forward without another word. 

Deleting what he’d written, he typed, _Insufferable._

Neil’s laugh, light and not anything close to ugly, filled up the back of the bus. 

* * *

Not three days after their removal from nationals, Palmetto State received visitors from Edgar Allan. Chins held high, lips curled distastefully, the visitors were none other than the Raven’s coach and his nephew, and an entorage of fans, reporters and muscle men.

The majority of Foxes, gathered in the girl’s room for an evening with booze and movies, didn’t know about it until the window pane rattled, the glass cracked, _shattered,_ and when everyone crowded closer to figure out what the hell had happened, a boy’s tiny voice carried from the field to their dorm, “Whoa! Aren’t those the Ravens?”

The window wasn’t forgotten. But all of them - all minus Andrew and Kevin, all plus Katelyn and two other Vixens - raced out to see what their rivals were doing on their home turf. After the incident with the cars, they didn’t want to take any chances. They weren’t expecting a crowd to block access to their own stadium. They took the back route, punching in the keycode and beeling for the locker room. At the end, Wymack’s office was lit; through glass windows, the Foxes took in the sight of Tetsuji and Wymack in mid-discussion, the latter rigid and the former aloof.

Down the way, the heavy door to the court creaked open. Aaron watched it while the others debated what the Coaches could possibly have to discuss. Part of him was disbelieving, but he couldn’t disbelieve what happened in front of his eyes. Maybe, he thought, the hinges were growing old and imbalanced. Maybe a draft had swung it open.

“Hey,” Aaron said, gaining Nicky and Katelyn’s attention immediately, “how’d that window break?”

“A rock?” Nicky guessed. “I don’t know - what’s it matter about the window? We’ve got Ravens in the fox hole.”

“I didn’t see a rock,” Katelyn worried.

_And I don’t feel a breeze_ , Aaron thought. Rather than say that, he nodded his chin toward the wide-open door. Both turned to look, one drunker than the other. 

Both said, “Isn’t that usually shut?”

All turned.

With indignant unity, all went to the court.

Although the doors were packed, the court itself held three figures: Kevin, Andrew and Riko. 

The latter two squared off chest to chest, both of their smiles carved from absolute malice. Behind Andrew, Kevin wouldn’t look up from the ground, his right hand grasping his left, the once-broken fingers slowly flexing.

“You want to hold him back that much?” Riko was saying. “He’ll rot in this dump. It’s cruel of you to trap him here.”

“Oi!” Dan called, turning all three heads their way: one shocked, one appaled, and one sickly amused. “What do you think you’re doing here, Riko?”

“Offering Kevin another chance to put his talents to use,” he replied, his shoulders stiffening as the Foxes and Vixens rallied behind their teammates and it became clear he was vastly outnumbered. Andrew might not have been able to easily touch him with his uncle down the hall and Minyard already on the school’s watch list, but there was simple intimidation at play with one against thirteen. 

“Fuck, you’re dense!” Seth groused. “Thought you’d have learned what he meant when he said no the first few times. Your ego like being bruised that much?” 

“Today, he hasn’t said no,” Riko shot back, fists balled at his sides. “Obviously, how awfully your season went has made him see the truth. Even with a Raven as good as Kevin on your side, you couldn’t score a single point against the Trojans. None of you, let alone your joke of a team, will amount to anything.”

Allison stepped forward, hand raised.

No one stopped her. But she hesitated, and wavered, and eventually let it drop as Riko choked, swayed, and stumbled back. His hands went to his throat, but there was nothing except air for him to grab onto. Beneath scrabbling fingers, the Foxes watched welts appear. They watched, frozen, as Riko screamed.

The Coaches were the first to arrive to the court. Muscle men were the second, and though Tetsuji snapped at them to hold back the crowd, reporters’ flashing cameras broke through the line. Wymack demanded his team and the Vixens move to the locker room. They were happy to oblige him, though more than a few of their number had to be reminded twice to look away from Riko’s crumpled, gasping form, his throat lacerated in finger-shaped burns. 

Shuffled alongside his brother, Aaron heard him mutter, “You couldn’t have done that earlier?” and, when he glanced over, saw Andrew’s eyes dart away from absolutely nothing.

A chill went up his back. The window, the perfectly timed exclamation, the door, the burning – earlier, even, how Andrew seemed to focus on nothing for extensive periods of time, the texts to no one (he said Bee, but Aaron knew they didn’t text that much). When it was just the nervous, confused and jumpy Foxes and Vixens in the locker room, the Coaches out attempting to corral the crowd, Aaron turned on him.

It didn’t make any sense at all, and it didn’t match up to anything Aaron understood as fact. But it would have taken someone a lot stupider than Aaron to know something wasn’t up, and out of all of them, Andrew was (as always) the least surprised.

“How did that happen, Andrew?” He demanded, his voice low.

Not low enough, apparently. Katelyn, her friends, Matt and Dan turned to them. Nicky echoed with a tense, “Andrew? You know how that happened?” 

For the first time, Andrew wasn’t just ignoring them: he seemed honestly speechless.

Rather, he seemed aggressively speechless. When Katelyn prompted him with a nervous, “Andrew?” he sneered at her.

“I have an idea,” Kevin said, startling them into turning toward him. “I’d thought– there were too many coincidences. The Moriyamas had been looking into the subject, but I didn’t know they were… I mean. It was a demon. Wasn’t it?”

Andrew looked at him, too, but refused to say anything as everyone else’s gaze moved between the two.

“A demon,” Matt stated.

“Is this really the time to be fucking with us, Day?” Seth growled.

“It sounds… as if the demon was helping us,” Renee said.

“It was.” Kevin said. Wavered. And shrunk into himself. It was discomforting - they hadn’t seen him this uncertain since the Winter Formal. Annoying as the militant Kevin Day could be about Exy, this fearful thing was so much worse. “It makes sense.”

One person said, “Does it.”

Another, “How does it?”

“Are we seriously considering this option? A demon?”

“I just watched a Riko Moriyama get choke-burned on nothing. Yeah, I think we could consider it.”

“He’s been around since this summer.” Andrew, finally, spoke. “Ever notice something odd or out of place? Something a little too convenient? It was probably him.”

No one made a move or noise.

They thought: _him_?

Aaron, finally, broke it. “You can see him.”

Kevin immediately said, “That’s impossible.”

“He’s hovering over your shoulder right now,” Andrew replied, voice and eyes flat. “Like an ugly, naked mother hen.”

Kevin glanced over his shoulder at nothing, regained some of his confidence, and turned back to snap at Andrew.

The locker he stood by banged, loud and clear and without Kevin so much as touching it.

A few people yelped. A few more jumped. Everyone, save Andrew, backed off.

Someone swore. Another echoed it.

“He’s… really on our side?” Nicky asked, voice shaking.

Andrew shrugged.

“So far.”

The locker rattled again, fainter.  Andrew scowled at nothing.

Renee asked, more gently,  "What’s he saying?“

Andrew turned the look on her, but she didn’t look away. After a god contest of wills, he moved one shoulder in another shrug, and glanced back to Kevin.

"For some reason,” he drawled, “he likes you all.”

“Oh,” Nicky squeaked. “A demon. Liking us. That’s good. That’s better than the alternative.”

Allison, in the back, threw up her hands. “With our luck? Getting a demon instead of an angel just fucking figures.”


End file.
